


Claustrophobia

by Sierendipity



Series: The Best We Can Hope For is Revenge [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Persona 5 Spoilers, conflicted Akechi- the sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 02:05:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16755793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sierendipity/pseuds/Sierendipity
Summary: "It makes something painful lodge in Goro’s throat, how easy the plan was. How the satisfaction settled, the acceptance sat, like stones in his stomach and heart crushed in Loki’s fingers, swallowed by that part of himself, wholly and entirely. The room presses, suffocates, some new tune tapped on his ribs, and Loki is laughing, chanting, I am thou, thou art I…"---Akechi Goro's hands are not clean, but Kurusu Akira holds them anyway. And as it is before any heist, plans must be made.





	Claustrophobia

**Author's Note:**

> The support Blind Eye received is incredible, you guys are the best. Have another, because I love you all. 
> 
> *Goro uses his gloves as a defense mechanism, fight me on this.  
> **Also turning this into a series because regular updates (or updates at all) are just things I can't promise, (ha), and ambiguous endings are my best friends.

Akira’s room is cleaner than Goro expected it to be.

It looks recently swept, shelves dusted and neatly organized. All the decorations are an odd assortment with no rhyme or reason, and yet they all have a place. “C’mere,” Akira says, pulling Goro next to him, legs folded, eyes fractured by his hair.

Goro sits, and Akira doesn’t let go of his hand, pale fingers laced with black fabric, something almost poetic in the contact. They sit like that, breathing, stillness broken only by Akira shifting his fingers to trace patterns on Goro’s hand, on Goro’s glove, on Goro’s mind.

He feels suddenly dry, wrung, the pieces of Loki and Robin Hood strung along the walls, littering the floor. The attic is too small; there’s not enough space for him and Akira and the swell of their souls, the weight of his deeds. Bitter hate rises like bile in the back of his throat, and he leans back, letting his eyes drift along the walls, the ceiling, counting trinkets and knickknacks and glow-in-the-dark stars like the grand expanse of words stuck to the roof of his mouth.

_Gifts,_ he realizes, deduces, understands. Because Akira’s friends care, because he is not broken, shattered too many years ago and put back together all wrong, jagged like the corners of Loki’s mask, knives in his stomach and serrated edges in his throat. It hurts to breathe, Loki a bleak black weight on his heart, smile a silenced pistol pressed to a mess of dark curls.

Goro closes his eyes, though the echo of staring lingers behind his lids, stars like bruises drifting in the dark. How is he supposed to begin? _Where_ is he supposed to begin? Breaching the subject, revealing the plan and the darkness and the feral grin, baring his soul; he’s not that brave. Loki’s smile and laugh and desire for chaos is who he is; there is not enough white-knight Justice in the world to wipe out the revenge and the blood staining Loki’s blades, Goro’s hands.

That hand Akira is still holding, tapping out a melody now, slightly muffled against the material shielding Goro’s skin. He opens his eyes, Akira’s weight shifts, and his head rests on Goro’s lap, eyes searching behind the glare washed across his glasses. “This okay?” he asks, pulling Goro’s arm across his chest without untangling their fingers. His legs are too long to fit properly on the seat, one bent at the knee, the other dangling off the end, shoes abandoned somewhere between the lobby and the stairs.

_The room is too small—_

Loki laughs.

“Yes,” Goro says, almost strangled, unsure what to do with his other hand. He keeps it at his side, clenched into a fist, fabric wrinkled, much as he wants to wind it through those curls, outline the details of the other boy’s face. Akira plays with his fingers, tracing the ridges of his knuckles, a raw tangle of light against the roaring in his head.

Akira hums, eyelids fluttering, lashes unfairly long. Goro has never fully appreciated how beautiful he is until now, this fool with his heart. Loki smirks, running fingers over the shadows staining that heart, spreading, burning. Goro closes his eyes again, squeezing Akira’s hand and earning one in return. It grounds him, pulls and ties him to the bench in the attic and not drifting in blood and bullets and shattered glass.

“They’re white in the Metaverse,” Akira comments lightly, pulling at the fabric of Goro’s glove. The motion snaps his eyes open, staring at Akira with something like a laugh poised on the tip of his tongue. _Start small, it seems._ Though that doesn’t stop the heat rising in his chest.

Akira taps the center of his palm, once, twice, then lines their hands together, fingers matched, two sides of the same card. Goro remembers those hands wrapped in red, offering him an opening, pulling him out of danger; sharp, bloody contrast against the lie he presented. He remembers it like a stain. He swallows the laugh and beats it into silence.

Grey eyes flick to his, no longer reflecting that red. “Why?” Akira asks, shifting his fingers enough that their hands lace together again, and he presses both to his chest. “You’re not a thief here, as far as I know, _detective._ ” His Joker-smirk is back, but his question is honest, and Goro can’t breathe.  Robin Hood shifts, twirls his sword, and the room shrinks several centimeters. Akira’s eyes are fathomless voids, an echo of the path, the plan, the darkness.

“There are many places I wouldn’t like to leave fingerprints.” Goro’s leg under Akira’s head is going numb, tingling, fleeting pain, but he doesn’t move it. “And in the beginning, the police didn’t take so kindly to a young, reckless detective poking his nose into places they did not believe it belonged.”

Akira laughs, a short bright burst, and Goro’s heart trips. “You, reckless?” he asks, rolling his eyes around the room and eventually ending in a staring contest with the far wall, smile pulling at his lips. “I’m shocked.”

“Mm,” Goro muses, a tightness in his chest that has nothing to do with the war already there. “It’s a title they assign before they know.” Akira’s hair is curling messily around the collar of his shirt; Goro clenches his free hand tighter to hold it still. “And once they know, then it’s a matter of keeping up appearances. They see us as things to be used.”

Loki rumbles approval through his ribcage, serrated and bleeding.

Akira’s hand closes tighter around his own, and his smile abandons him.

“Appearances,” he mutters, something sharp sliced through the word. His head rolls around so it faces their joined hands on his chest, and he breathes. Once. “And what _appearances_ are you holding onto right now?” he asks, voice a strained, tight thing.

The approval morphs into a snarl, darkness staining the response, blood on the words. Goro flexes his fingers; Akira watches them move without adding to it, his own hand a dead weight between them.

“…We are long past appearances at this point, I think,” Goro says, sighs, knowing the answer and the outcome before he even finishes the sentence. He’ll have to come clean, clean like his skin will inevitably be, scrubbed raw and dry and dripping. There’s a warped, broken kind of satisfaction at the memory, seeing red.

“Can I...?”

Loki’s laugh almost drowns out Akira’s reply, splintering through him. Goro momentarily loses sight of Robin Hood in the aftermath, but Akira’s eyes dart up to his, steel and shadow, and Goro nods. He breathes. The room expands, retracts, recedes. Robin Hood blinks, quiet, in the remains of his heart.

Akira’s fingers slide to the exposed strip of skin at his wrist, and he tenses, almost subconsciously. He pulls the fabric back like it might tear, gently, slowly, revealing the pale expanse of Goro’s hand, his knuckles, his fingers, his nails, perfectly rounded and clean, clear, unmarred.

Goro remembers them red, crusted, dried, and has to close his eyes. The Detective Prince does not have clean hands. They are easier to look at outside of this mask, without the jacket and the weight and the stares. This appearance is a lie, a rise to power accomplished through slicing opposition to ribbons beneath Loki’s knives. The blood roaring in his ears is enough of a reminder.

Akira’s chest rises and falls underneath his hand, waiting, and then he laces their fingers together again, skin to skin. Goro opens his eyes in time to see Akira raise their hands and kiss his knuckles, lips scorching and something wicked in his smile.

“Better,” he says, as if that settles it. “Appearances are bullshit, anyway.”

Goro’s laugh snaps out of him before he can stop it, bent in on itself, shaking his shoulders. He’s distantly aware he’s blushing, and he raises his free hand to his face to muffle, reveling in the release shattering through him. He notices every detail of Akira’s skin, the lean fingers, the calluses on his palm from constantly rotating that dagger. Mostly, though, Akira’s hands are warm, and he shifts his thumb to press against the other boy’s pulse, fluttering beneath his skin like a bird. His host of ever-changing Personas, and he’s still made of flesh and blood and bone, still very breakable, despite the masks.

It makes something painful lodge in Goro’s throat, how easy the plan was. How the satisfaction settled, the acceptance sat, like stones in his stomach and heart crushed in Loki’s fingers, swallowed by that part of himself, wholly and entirely. The room presses, suffocates, some new tune tapped on his ribs, and Loki is laughing, chanting, _I am thou, thou art I…_

_From the sea of thy soul, I come—_

Akira squeezes his hand, smile hooked in the corner of his lip, hair in his eyes and free hand extended. “The other one.” His fingers curl, beckoning, smile expanding to full Joker. “You’ve gotta lose these; I want to know who it is I’m talking to.”

Goro stares at him, voices begging for their lives in his periphery. There is only one path to Shido, and he has carved it out of blood. No regrets, just resolve, revenge, deaf to the screaming of Robin Hood in his chest, muted beneath the laughter.

He thinks about a pistol pressed to those curls, the fragility of his pulse. Flesh and blood and bone. His hand relaxes as he offers it, and Akira detangles their grip to pull on each finger of his glove until it sits loosely, waiting. He pinches the middle finger and flicks his eyes to Goro’s, patient, quiet. _You’re up._

Goro retracts his hand, watching a similar reveal, palm hovering over Akira’s muted stare, the sudden dusting of cool air like a step into the light. He stretches his skin, watching it pull and bend over ropy knuckles, calluses of his own shiny from swordplay. Akira’s lips twitch.

“Aha, the real Akechi Goro, at last.”

_You haven’t the faintest idea._ Goro smirks, swallows down the broken melody echoing through him and slowly, ever so carefully, winds his fingers through Akira’s hair, trailing down to the mess at the nape of his neck, up to the strands of it resting on his cheeks, mapping him out. Akira releases a pleased kind of hum that curls up from low in his throat, smiles, closes his eyes. Goro is far beyond marveling at his trust, and simply continues the deconstruction.

Silence hangs. He’s going to have to tell him, say the words aloud, and lift the crushing weight. They need to be said; whether he has already heard them, Goro knows the power of lies left to fester. This boy steadily loosening beneath his touch has heard enough of them already.

“Akira—”

“No, wait.” Akira sits up, so fast Goro’s fingers nearly snag in his hair, swinging his legs to the floor. “If we’re talking strategy now, I’m not doing it like this.” He crosses the room and sifts through his clothes, lobbing a plain shirt and a pair of sweatpants in Goro’s direction. “You can wear those. Contrary to popular belief, I _do_ need sleep, and so do you.”

Goro catches the clothes easily enough, glancing around the room and noting where Akira is going with this easily enough; he’s missed the last train, he’s agreed to stay, there’s only one bed. He clenches his hands in the material, staring at Akira as he, utterly shameless, tugs his shirt over his head by the collar and rolls it into a ball. Every move lingers with hints of Joker, sharp lines and easy grace. Goro stares, Akira grins at him, and Loki twists uncomfortably tight, filling all Goro’s cracks with shadow and silence.

Goro pushes it down and stands, demurer, selecting a corner for himself and starting with his tie. He closes his eyes as he pulls on the knot, blocking out anything that is not him and his hands. It’s a routine, a process, and he’s distinctly aware of Akira’s eyes hot on the back of his neck, but he’s far too tired; now is not the time. The sweatpants are a little too short, but the shirt fits fine, and when he turns there’s a wash of pink on Akira’s cheeks, blanket held back like an invitation.

Two, it seems, can play at this game.

And there’s no going back, now. Not anymore.

Goro clicks the lights, plunging the space into shadows and moonlight. He leaves his clothes folded across the room, gloves atop the pile mocking him, and gravitates to the promise of warmth, the slope of Akira’s smile. He’s not certain of a plan, the world is still a mess outside of this room, but he’s been following Akira long enough to know he was a lost cause from the moment he hid behind Robin Hood and called himself _Crow._

“You’re cold,” Akira mutters, tugging him further beneath the blanket, closer, one hand drifting tentatively to his cheek to brush hair out of his eyes. Loki grins, teeth clicking together.

“I think it’s this room,” he manages to say, and Akira laughs. “You should have caught hypothermia already.”

Akira continues grinning, almost wickedly. “My immune system is one of my many strong qualities.” Seemingly satisfied with Goro’s hair, he takes his hand instead, moving marginally closer so they’re breathing the same air.

Goro folds in on himself, witty reply dying on his tongue at Akira’s proximity, hair highlighted by the moon, the calm before the storm, waiting for the inevitable decline following the truth. He smells like coffee and laundry detergent and lingering hints of something spiced, and Goro can’t breathe. “I…” He shifts their interlocked fingers, suffocating in Loki’s broken laugh. Where to begin, how to begin. He blinks, and Akira’s expression rearranges itself, smile fading, suddenly the leader, serious and quiet and thoughtful. He waits, ever patient, and Goro knows he will never be worthy of him.

But the mask makes it easier to talk to him, easier to breathe, easier to draw Loki up from the dark, sticky places of his soul and lay him bare.

_I am thou, thou art I…_

“My plan… was to kill you,” Goro says, the words bloody, landing between them with the kick of a gunshot. Loki’s grin expands so wide it nearly cracks one of his ribs, spreading teeth and jagged edges, ripping him to pieces. _Chaos. Chaos._ “For it to work, you had to die. It was the only way.” He presses his forehead to Akira’s, listening to him breathe, inhale, exhale. Flesh and blood and bone.

“In theory, it was flawless. It was—until it wasn’t. Heralded second coming of the Detective Prince, brought so low.” He scoffs, thinking of the apparently adoring fans so quick to turn if he so much as tripped. Goro searches Akira’s face; this is spilling out of him too easily, too empty and quiet for the weight of the words. But Akira simply stares at him, mask whole and constant. He’s supposed to be reacting to this; he’s supposed to be pulling away. The bloody truth should be cracking even _his_ practiced façade.

“It was supposed to be a triumph for me to win back the support I had lost.” _No going back._ Robin Hood has begun to smile, nearly an equal to Loki’s rib-shattering grin, softer at the edges. “And then you. I couldn’t understand why you were not who I expected you to be.”

Akira’s face doesn’t change, but his eyes flash, too quick to discern in the weak lighting. He still hasn’t moved; if anything, his grip on Goro’s hand is tighter than before.

“But that plan was the only one I had. I convinced myself it was the only way, until today. And Akira, I have—”

The kiss surprises him, all at once hungry and desperate and sweet. This isn’t how this story was supposed to end; it’s far from over, so much left to say, but his words are being stolen from him, as is all the breath remaining in his lungs. Akira kisses him without hesitation, hands roaming hot at the hem of his shirt, brushing skin. Goro gasps and winds own hands into Akira’s hair, dazed, drowning, but going willingly.

And when he can breathe again, when Akira has pressed his nose into the crook of Goro’s neck and the room is not nearly so small, he hears the words he was somehow expecting and not.

“I know.” Akira buries himself deeper into the space between Goro’s jaw and his shoulder, hair tickling the side of his face. “I know about all of it.” The words are muffled, and they rumble against his skin.

He should have known, really, that this was inevitable. The first time he’d met Akira, he already seemed too observant to be anything other than what Goro found him to be. A leader. A thief. He cards his hand through Akira’s hair and breathes, filling his lungs without aching for the first time in a long, long time. Loki taps his ribs but remains otherwise silent. Robin Hood looks on.

“Futaba bugged your phone,” Akira says, rolling onto his side to stare at Goro, the warmth of his hands vanishing suddenly from grazing hungrily over his skin. “And while we plotted, I made my own plan.” His hand shifts to Goro’s chest, right above his heart, and taps it twice, expression entirely open and completely serious. “To steal this,” he smirks, “and recruit you for real.”

Plans on plans. Akira’s not stupid. He had beaten Goro, wholly, before the game had even begun. Goro smiles, just a small thing, but for once it’s not a mask. “You’re insane,” he breathes, even as Loki patters meaningless melodies in his chest cavity, laughing. “I planned to…” _Kill you._ He can’t say it again. It’s been said, and they’re only words, now. But Akira nods.

“You’re terribly obvious, detective,” he says, tucking Goro’s hair behind one of his ears.

Goro catches his wrist, turns it over, pressing his thumb to Akira’s pulse. “And if you hadn’t convinced me, if you hadn’t been precisely who you are…”

“Then I lost, and you won. That’s only fair.”

Goro’s eyes shoot to his face. “That’s not—”

“Yes, it is.” Akira’s expression has gone hard at the edges, moonlight toying with the shadows across his face. “I’m playing with the last piece I have. The world has already _taken_ everything else.”

Goro has no retort for that. Akira’s lips twitch into a fractured smirk. “At least if I’d lost this, it would’ve been against a worthy opponent.” Loki shifts, blood on his knives. Goro counts the beat of Akira’s pulse, steady, soothing.

“I’m not a worthy opponent,” he says, and Akira’s smirk widens, leaning closer so their breaths mingle. The expression nearly matches Loki’s, and his stomach turns over.

“No, you are,” Akira says, “which is why nothing tomorrow is going to change. I’m still going to get caught, and you’re still going to betray us, and it’s all going to play out the same way.” He frees his hand to tap Goro’s heart again, skin ethereal in the moonlight. “And when your original opening comes,” he pauses, breathing, eyes gunmetal and ash, “you’re still going to shoot me.”

Loki starts laughing, laughing, shaking and splintering the edges of Goro’s ribs. He blinks, overtly aware of Akira’s fingers lingering on his own heartbeat. _“What?”_

Akira smiles, defiant, close enough to kiss. “You heard me,” he breathes, and there’s nothing strangled or uncertain in his voice. “I _have_ a failsafe. You asked; this is my answer. Niijima-san is going to give you a phone. When this happens, all is going according to plan, and you’re up.” He pauses to trace the curve of Goro’s jaw, touch featherlight and almost sad. “And if this doesn’t happen, then you do whatever it is you have to do. At that point, I’ve lost.”

Goro, for the first time in recent memory, is completely speechless, thoughts a whirling, tangled mess. _No._ “Akira, that’s—”

“Suicide?” Akira asks, lip curled up bitterly in the corner of his mouth. He raises himself off the bed, just enough to hover over Goro, half his face cast in shadow. “It’s fitting, I think.” Goro remains silent, voice choked, stolen, before reaching up and grazing his knuckles down Akira’s cheek. He sighs into the touch. “I know, I’m sorry. I’ll be fine, if it works. Just… trust me. If we don’t risk this, we _all_ lose, in the end. Not just me.”

There’s a long moment of silence. The edges of Goro’s vision seem to constrict, but he breathes. They’ve been backed into a corner; Akira is right. _He_ backed them into a corner. _Trust me._ He rotates his palm and pulls Akira toward him, kissing him once, and again, slow, delicate presses of his lips. “Okay,” he whispers between them, barely breathing. “I trust you.”

Even as he says the words, they don’t feel real, like he’s speaking through someone else’s voice, seeing through someone else’s eyes. This plan is madness, inherently and entirely. Akira’s eyes are downcast, still leaning into Goro’s palm, breathing. If he’s uncertain, there’s no trace of it in the shredded shadow of his expression. Goro thumbs a circle over his cheek and rests their foreheads together, gathering and analyzing the details of him. It’s impossible to tell if it’s a brave front or he honestly cares so little.

“I trust you,” Goro repeats, even softer, a dust of breath over Akira’s skin. Even if he is yet drowning, dizzy, even if Loki pricks his heart with a knife. It shudders its way down Akira’s spine, and then he’s being peppered with sharp, needy kisses. His jaw. His cheek. His neck. Again. Again. Each one warmer, faster than the last, steadily growing more desperate until Goro catches Akira by the chin and drags him into a real kiss, reveling in the muffled moan he pulls from between Akira’s lips.

His control nearly unravels, held together only by the jagged reminder Loki provides. _Chaoschaoschaoschaos—_

Akira breaks away, both of them breathless, smile like his dagger. Goro can hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears and reaches up to loop his arms around Akira’s neck, dragging the other boy to a curled, tangled mess on top of him, heat cooling in the night and the moon. There will be time to reanalyze and comprehend later, when he can once again hear Loki over the thrumming.

Akira laughs. “Good,” he says, voice thick, muffled, nuzzling his face into Goro’s shoulder. “Good. I’m glad.” He presses a light, almost thoughtless kiss to Goro’s collarbone, and Goro’s heart ceases bleeding. Akira’s body rumbles with another chuckle before it fades into a sigh. “…I’m sorry. I am. I swear it’ll make sense when it’s over, one way or another.”

Goro’s not so sure. He wraps his arms around Akira a little tighter. There’s more he’s not being told, he knows this; it’s in the slight hitch with which Akira breathes, noticeable only because he’s so close. Loki _tsks,_ traces his ribs, but if his secrets will keep Akira alive, Goro is willing to let him keep them.

He will play his part and demand them later, _one way or another._

“We should sleep,” he says, though sleep is the last thing on his mind. Akira’s head lolls sideways, hair mussed and tangled, eyes entirely hidden by glare. He nods. Once. Goro frees one of his hands and removes Akira’s glasses, folding them neatly and fumbling in the dark for the shelf he knows is next to the bed. The click of his success is the only sound in the room.

His hand returns to stroke through Akira’s hair almost on instinct, dark strands curling around his fingers, as he counts his breaths and Loki’s melody until they match. Akira is asleep before his countdown has finished, and he mumbles to himself, _why_ and _yes_ and _rehabilitation_ , cohesion broken through the angle of his head to Goro’s chest.

Something besides blood and glass rises in Goro’s ribcage, brighter and sharper than either, and his heart swells, constricts, releases. _Chaos._ He presses a kiss to Akira’s hair, thinking about silenced pistols and hollow eyes and what he’s just agreed to do.

From the shadow of his heart, Loki’s smirk grows.

**Author's Note:**

> I swear this started as a much less complicated idea, really, please believe me. But here we are. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
